


Applicants Enquire Within

by adiduck (book_people)



Series: Origin Stories [1]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Gore, Jaeger Origin Story, Pre-Canon, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 00:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/book_people/pseuds/adiduck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hyde Heterodyne wasn't really looking for potential jaegers. Sometimes, you get applicants anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Applicants Enquire Within

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I posted about a year ago on tumblr--the third I wrote in the fandom, I believe. It's a silly look at how Dimo may have been recruited, and it's the companion to the Oggie origin story in the same "series." There was originally supposed to be a Maxim one too, but that... didn't happen. Um. Sorry?
> 
> This and the Oggie origin story are not compliant with any of my other stories or series (in particular here I mean The General, which has a rather different origin for Dimo), and the writing is (I hope) no longer up to my usual standards. Please excuse!

When Gkika stuck her head in and said a local boy wanted to have a word, Hyde Heterodyne was understandably a bit surprised. For one thing, he was elbow deep in the bowels of a fallen enemy at the time, looking for the device Julius the Conjurer had embedded that had made the soldier grow retractable metal spikes. For another, Hyde honestly could not remember the last time one of the jägermonsters had tried to introduce him to _anyone_.

Okay, Günther had introduced him to Julius.

Okay, Julius’s head. Hyde was going to get around to meeting Julius properly just as soon as he figured out the spikes, he promised.

The spikes actually appeared to be welded to the spinal column, which was interesting. The metal wires snaked out and in through the spinal cord itself, which explained why the spikes had torn up so much when the soldier had been in his death throes. How sloppy of Julius. Hyde would have to see if he could figure out a way to make that controllable, or at least protected the spinal cord so death throes would be less likely. Once he got the damn thing off, that is…

…he’d been thinking of something else. Oh, right, Gkika! Gkika and the local boy who wanted to meet him. He looked back over at Gkika, who had been standing at the door and waiting patiently for him to remember she’d come in five minutes ago and said something before he got distracted by the spikes again. She was grinning at him, comfortably standing at ease, new hat just barely brushing the doorframe.

…Oh, alright, he supposed if the boy didn’t mind the gore. “Send him in, I suppose,” Hyde said, and turned back to the corpse. Ah _ha_ , there, now if he could just _ease_ it out…

The spike device turned out to be fascinating. Of course there had to be a way other than wires to tell the spikes when to expand and when to contract, and it looked like Julius had acknowledged that and worked in a sort of flex mechanism. Curl your spine, and the spikes would react. Beautiful mechanics, really, although embedding the wires to allow that had to have created some paralysis. He really needed a closer look at the spine.

The spring mechanism brought his attention back when a section of spike he’d removed landed poorly on the table, putting enough pressure on the hinge for it to spring right over his head and jam into a wall, wobbling there. Hyde blinked at it, eyebrow raised, and pushed his hair off his forehead with one bloody hand.

Hrm. Spring-loaded projectile spike weapon in the spine. Now that was an interesting idea. How would you reload…?

No, wait, first he had to confirm the paralysis problem. He reached over the body and started to try to flip it over.

Oof, this one needed to go on a bit of a diet. It couldn’t have been the metal, he’d removed that.

A pair of hands he’d noticed peripherally starting about ten minutes ago appeared and gripped the other side of the corpse. With two people, the soldier flipped neatly onto his stomach and started oozing old bodily fluids onto the table and into the drain in the floor below.

“Thank you,” Hyde said absently, and was halfway through cutting into the body the other way before he realized he hadn’t called any minions.

…Oh right! The boy!

The boy was… not actually a boy, honestly, and he really needed to remember that the jägergenerals tended to refer to anyone under the age of 100 as “keed.” This “boy” looked to be about 20, solidly built, with hair that brushed the tops of his ears and a scraggly beard that came to a point on his chin. There was something about the face shape that looked vaguely familiar, actually, but Hyde let that go as unimportant in the quest for further information about the man’s identity.

“You’re who Gkika wanted to introduce to me?” Hyde asked.

The man looked over at him and grinned. “Ho, yes,” he said.

“Oh. You didn’t say anything when you came in.”

“Hy did, ecktually,” he said, absently wiping a gorey hand on his trowsers without any apparent concern to what it was. “Hyu were busy, though, so I decided to vait.”

Mechanicsburg curled through his vowels like the friendly venomous snake she was. Definitely a local boy. Huh. Had he seen him in town, maybe…? Did he already work for Hyde? No, he’d wanted an _introduction_.

“…You’re not already a minion I’ve forgotten, are you?” Hyde asked, just to make sure.

The man grinned. “No,” he said, obviously amused. Well, good. Hyde knew he could be a little scattered, and it was always embarrassing to be introduced to someone and find out it was the 20th time.

“Hm,” Hyde said, wiping his hands on a handy rag and looking the man up and down. “Want a job?”

The grin widened. “Hy do, actually, but not az a minion.”

“…Huh.” Hyde narrowed his eyes at him. “What job were you thinking?”

“I vas thinking ‘jägermonster’ vould be interesting,” the man said easily, cocking an eyebrow and shoving his hands into his pockets, apparently unconcerned by standing in a Heterodyne lab with a Heterodyne narrowing his eyes at him.

Hyde stared.

Well. This was new.

Not to have a volunteer for the jägerdraught, that was par for the course. Usually, though, soldiers didn’t take “volunteer” in such a… literal fashion.

Well, he wasn’t so much volunteering as he was _applying_ , Hyde supposed. The man did say he was looking for a _job_.

…Did Hyde pay jägers? He wasn’t sure. He should ask the Castle later. As far as Hyde knew, jägers were just _there_ , a constant, bloodthirsty, reassuringly accommodating presence. They’d been around his whole life and they would be around for all the generations after, and Hyde hadn’t given them much thought other than that. He hadn’t even made any _more_.

… _Well_. Hyde cast around for the types of questions one would ask if one were attempting to determine if someone would meet the qualifications to become a jäger.

“…How are your reflexes, then?” He finally came up with.

The man blinked. “Vell, hy dodged _that_ a leetle bit ago,” he offered, pointing at the spike that was still embedded in the wall.

…Hyde should really get that back, actually. “Give that back, would you, Castle?” he called, glancing up at the ceiling.

“With _pleasure_ ,” the Castle answered, and the spike flung itself backwards out of the wall and straight at the man Hyde had been talking to.

“Hoy!” the man shouted, surprised. He reached back blindly and grabbed an instrument tray, whipping it up and in front of his face in time to whack the spike back towards the wall again. The hinge bounced off the tray with an almighty _clang_ and went careening off into a water pipe, which promptly burst. The instruments that had been on the tray clattered to the floor.

…Make that _very_ good reflexes.

The man stared blankly at the mess for a second and then smacked himself in the forehead, rubbing his face with a grimace and then turning to eye Hyde with some trepidation. “Ah. Dot was an accident.”

“Hm? Oh.” Hyde waved it off. “Are you in the army?”

The man blinked. “Ah. No?”

“Hm… where did you get reflexes like that then?”

“Oh, that.” He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Hy’m a bouncer.”

“…do sharp objects often fly at your head as a bouncer?”

“In _dis_ bar, yes,” the man said, voice wry.

“What bar?” Hyde asked, interested.

“Ah.” The man shifted a little, feet sloshing in the rising water that couldn’t quite drain fast enough to prevent flooding. “ _The_ Bar.”

It took Hyde a moment to figure out what he meant. “The jäger bar?”

“Someone needs to come up vit a better name,” the man opined, looking a little pained.

“Someone needs to buy it from old Max,” Hyde agreed. “He doesn’t have any children, does he?”

“No, hy think de jägers are talking about buying it off him.”

“Oh, that would work out nicely, act—wait, that wasn’t the point. The point was you bounce at a bar _frequented by jägers_.”

“Hy don’t bounce _downstairs_ , usually,” the man explained, looking embarrassed again. “Hy bounce in the human part. Hy mostly work downstairs if old Max needs another set of knees to cover de bar itself.”

“…But how did you get the reflexes, then?”

“…My lord,” the man started, “how often do you go _into_ de Bar?”

That was a good point. Hyde moved on. “How did you even get a job with old Max? The man listens to three people in the world, and two of them are jägergenerals.”

“Mm,” the man said noncommittally, eyes going a little shifty. “Hy had a… family conncection.”

“What, to Max? No, that’s impossible, he doesn’t have any living family.” Hyde absently scratched his face, and then used the back of his hand to wipe off the blood he’d smeared. “…To the jägergenerals?”

The man’s shoulders slumped a little. “Sort of…”

Something about the hangdog expression caught Hyde, the way he rubbed at the bottom of his nose in embarrassment—the nose! Oh, Hyde felt stupid. He should have recognized the nose even if it _wasn’t_ violently yellow.

“You’re Golo’s son!” Hyde exclaimed, throwing his arms out in triumph. “Oh, I feel silly right now. He’d told me he had two children in town. You and a younger sister, yes?”

The man sighed. “Yes, dot’s right.”

“And you’re…” he snapped his fingers, searching for the name. “Dimo. You’re Dimo, right?”

“Dot’s me,” the now-named Dimo agreed, looking a little resigned.

“You look like him,” Hyde told Dimo, grinning hugely. “Except… without the teeth. Or the orange hair. Or the yellow skin.”

“So Hy’ve been told,” Dimo agreed.

“Oh, I’d meant to go and meet you earlier this month,” Hyde babbled on, “I just got distracted by—“ He stopped, remembering suddenly why he’d meant to go meet Golo’s children.

Dimo looked back steadily.

“…Oh.” Hyde said, and ran his hands through his hair, suddenly nervous. “I… I’m terribly sorry. For your loss, I mean.”

Dimo snorted, and smiled. “Iz fine. De jägers say it vas a good last fight.”

Silence reigned for a moment, as Hyde tried to find something to say and Dimo looked increasingly more uncomfortable. Finally, Dimo looked down at the water slowly rising to mid-calf. “Ah, should somevun do something about de pipe?” he ventured.

Oh the _pipe_. Hyde scrambled over to the pipe, picking up a handful of tools and a bit of metal plating along the way. “Red _fire_ ,” he swore, jumping for the pipe and realizing it was _way_ too high to reach. “Castle, could you—“ the floor he was standing on suddenly rose about a foot. “Thanks.” He got to work patching the pipe. The plating was a bit too long, he’d have to cut it. Or maybe he could bend it? Oh, he could probably use it to attach something here. Maybe that collapsible shield he’d gotten on the last campaign. What had he done with that… He turned to cast his eyes over the room and noticed Dimo again.

Right. Hyde turned back to the pipe. “So,” he said, as conversationally as possible. “You’re trying to join the family business, is that it?”

“Heh, something like that,” Dimo offered. Hyde kept his eyes on the pipe. Much easier to have this conversation when he wasn’t looking at his conversational partner.

“Hrm, well, I think you have the right reflexes for it, and if you work at the Bar at _all_ you can probably fight a bit,” Hyde mused, quickly soldering one half of the plate in place and bending the other so it would follow the pipe’s curve. “I think the general protocol is to join the army first and prove that to the generals, first, though, isn’t it?”

“Dot’s what General Khrizhan said,” came the reply. Dimo actually sounded more relaxed, too, now that Hyde wasn’t staring at him. “But General Gkika said it vouldn’t hurt to ask you directly, in case you didn’t want to make any jägers at _all_. She said hyu hadn’t.”

“It had never occurred to me,” Hyde admitted, quickly soldering the second half in place and letting the water cool the metal down. “Hrm…” he muttered. “That’s going to need a better patch later…” He turned to look at Dimo again.

“Well, I’d be willing to do it, but I think you should at least have a year or two in the army first,” Hyde told the young man, crossing his arms and scratching at an itchy spot on his scalp with the soldering gun. “Why don’t we say… two year trial period? That way you can change your mind if you want.” And Hyde would have time to forget he wanted to find the jägerdraught recipe a good few times before he managed to find it.

Actually, he’d been kind of thinking of trying something chemical for a while. It might even be fun!

“Dot seems fair,” Dimo said, nodding and shoving his hands in his pockets. “Thank hyu, my lord.”

“I’m not sure thanks are really in order for a ‘let’s wait and see,’” Hyde mused, frowning.

“Hy disagree.” Dimo grinned at him. “Hy think this will be fun either vay, really.”

Hyde snorted. It certainly could be!

(“Zo vat he say?” Gkika asked, as Dimo strolled out of the lab after a wave of dirty water. Dimo grinned.

“He says hy should join de army first.”

“Ho, dot’s eazy,” Gkika assured, slinging an arm over Dimo’s shoulder and walking towards the exit, ignoring Dimo’s _oof_ as he got some wind knocked out of him. “Jorgi vas sayink he’d tek hyu on a trial basis. Hyu see, hyu be a jäger befory hyu sister iz old enough to tek over for hyu et de Bar.”

“Sure,” Dimo said, with a shrug. “If he rememberz.”

“He’ll remember,” Gkika informed him eyeing him sideways.

“Hmm…” Dimo answered noncommittally.

“Feefty seyz hy’m right.”

“Hyu are on,” Dimo responded, and Gkika finally felt him relax a bit under her arm.

Needless to say, Gkika won the bet.)


End file.
